


All the Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things

by AstridContraMundum



Series: After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been [11]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Charades, Christmas Fluff, Holiday Stress, Mistletoe, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridContraMundum/pseuds/AstridContraMundum
Summary: What happens when one of society’s most glittering, gracious hosts tries to plan a holiday party with the most ungracious, awkward sod imaginable?Bixby isn’t quite sure, either.
Relationships: Fred Thursday/Win Thursday, George Fancy/Shirley Trewlove, Joan Thursday/Jim Strange, Joss Bixby/Endeavour Morse
Series: After-comers Cannot Guess The Beauty Been [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1152587
Comments: 30
Kudos: 41





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chatelaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chatelaine/gifts), [Kmrjo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kmrjo/gifts), [IamLittleLamb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamLittleLamb/gifts).



> This is set at Christmas 1974. I'm skipping ahead a few years in case I do a remix of season 7 for this verse... which would occur between Windmills and this one. :D
> 
> Just a bit of Christmas fluff to say thank you to those of you who follow this quirky little verse. I really appreciate y'all willing to tread this far from canon. <3<3<3
> 
> Thanks for reading! <3<3

Outside the window of Bixby’s study, the world was heavy and white, as if the sky was full of the promise of snow.

He hoped that it _would_ snow. Even after all of these years, it still felt new to him; it still felt like something close to magic, watching those large and drifting flakes fall and cling to the grass, remaining fresh and whole right where they landed, rather than melting away like a whisper as soon as they touched the ground.

Bixby closed up his leather portfolio and pushed his chair back from his desk. He had had enough of the old game for one day. The clacking and clicking of Endeavour’s typewriter, which had been sounding earlier from down the hall like a pattering of rain, had ceased hours ago. It was high time Bix kicked off work for the day as well.

As he came out the door of his study, however, he was surprised to hear, not the strain of an opera record wafting from the drawing room, where Endeavour usually lay in the evenings, stretched out on the carpet, but instead, the low rumble of the television set at the back of the house, and Endeavour laughing that laugh that sounded like water on the dock in Oxfordshire.

Bixby smiled, bemused.

Other than that sudden burst of interest he had in Mr. Bright’s safety spot, Endeavour rarely deigned to watch the television. And when he did, he rarely laughed at anything he might happen to see on it. 

Usually, he simply looked at it as if he was affronted by the thing.

Bix sauntered into the living room, and, sure enough, there he was: lying on the couch, his head turned sideways on a throw pillow, as if he was half-napping, half-watching the screen. And so Bix picked up Endeavour’s feet and collapsed onto the other end, depositing his feet back into his lap as he sank into the cushions and stretched his own legs out before him.

“What are you watching?” Bix asked.

“It’s that Christmas movie,” Endeavour said.

“Ah,” Bixby said. It took only one quick glance at the screen, on which Jimmy Stewart was running, deranged, through Pottersville, to narrow it down.

“It’s A Wonderful Life,” Bixby said.

Endeavour frowned, as if he thought perhaps that Bix was taking things a bit too far, but then he shrugged.

“I suppose,” he said. “All in all.”

“No. That’s the name of the movie,” Bix said.

“Oh,” Endeavour said.

Bixby snorted.

Very nice.

Endeavour was certainly in a mood, that much was clear.

And why in the hell had he been laughing at _this_ part of the movie? Even now, he was watching Jimmy Stewart’s breakdown with obvious delight, as if there was some key scene he was waiting for.

It always made Bixby feel slightly ill, the surrealness of it all, of how quickly the lowball dark comedy of the film suddenly descended into the spiraling madness of a man whose past had been obliterated—whose very _self_ had been obliterated—to the point that he no longer exists.

George Bailey runs through his town, now rendered an alien land, pleads with the mother who no longer recognizes him, argues with his onetime friends, not understanding how it can be that the people who he grew up with no longer know him, as if his very life had not been real, as if it had all been only a fantastic dream of his own devising.

Well. It didn’t take any stretch of the imagination to guess what might be needling Endeavour.

“So,” Bix asked, “have you had anymore RSVPs? For your party?”

“No,” Endeavour said. “That was the last of them. It looks as if everyone is coming.”

There was a pause.

“That Jim Strange certainly is a cracker,” Endeavour said.

And there it was.

Bix wasn’t sure if he could fault him there. It _had_ been a surprise, finding out all in a rush that Jim Strange had been promoted to Detective Inspector and, just two months later, had married Joan Thursday.

When Bix had first stayed at the Thursdays’ house, during that summer that he and Endeavour had returned to Oxford after Endeavour’s drafts had been stolen by the Wildwood, Joan Thursday had been estranged from her parents, so much so that it was a sore point at the dinner table even to bring her up in the course of the conversation.

So Bixby had rather missed the memo on all of that.

He had never for a moment imagined that anything ever lay between them, Joan and Endeavour, had never once factored anything of the sort into the equation.

But, after all, when Bix had first met Endeavour, he had been firmly ensconced back into the old circle of his Oxford friends, and so it was amidst that set that Bix looked for his more immediate rivals—to Susan, perhaps, or Kay or Tony.

And then, once that set had imploded, leaving Bixby looking rather like a breath of fresh air in the process, and Endeavour began to renew his friendships with his former colleagues from Cowley, there had been that pathologist: sharp-eyed and sharper-witted, always vibrating at that weird frequency that Bixby found irritating and inscrutable, but which always seemed to draw Endeavour in like a magnet.

So it wasn’t until later, years later, that Bix had picked up on the fact that there had ever been a glimmer of something there, some failed and flailing flirtation, between Endeavour and Joan Thursday.

From the sound of things, Endeavour had made rather a hash of it: hemming and hawing about, trying to make some sort of connection with the young woman—whom Bix had always known to be confident and straightforward—that the poor, awkward sod just couldn’t manage to pull off.

Whether it was because Joan was not willing to meet Endeavour halfway out of a lack of real interest in him, or because she was disinclined to make the sort of compromises a young woman might have to make in being courted by someone as tentative and vacillating as Endeavour, Bix wasn’t sure.

But, be that as it may: Now, Jim Strange had it all.

He had made the rank to which Endeavour had at one time aspired. And he had Joan, the boss’s daughter, Endeavour’s onetime dream girl. And, as such, Strange was now Fred and Win Thursday’s son in a way that Endeavour would never be.

Who could blame Endeavour, really, for feeling off-kilter about it all? 

Even Bix felt it, the oddness of the thing.

Against all real reason, he had become quite used to thinking of _himself_ as something of a son-in-law to the Thursdays, even at his position twice removed—Endeavour not actually being their son, and he and Endeavour not actually, legally a couple.

But now, Jim Strange was the genuine article. From here on out, it would be Strange telling Fred Thursday how work was going, as if reporting in that all was well. It would be Strange letting the old man win a hand or two at cards when he was in a dark mood. Strange suggesting they all get a cup of tea, when the conversation wobbled a little off base.

“Hmmmmmm,” Bixby conceded. “It _is_ a surprise. Are they both coming then? Joan and Jim?” 

“Yes,” Endeavour shrugged, only half-listening, annoyed at being bothered when he was trying to watch the movie.

But Bixby couldn’t help it. He had to know.

“Does that … does it bother you? The idea?” he asked.

“Well, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I feel a little odd. That’s something of the course I once thought my life would take, I suppose,” Endeavour mused. 

“But . . . you aren’t _sorry_ about it. It’s good, isn’t it, that things worked out as they did?” Bixby prodded.

Endeavour turned to him then, as if taken by surprise, scowling. “Why ask such a thing?” he asked. “What difference does it make?”

Bix found he had to turn away under the asperity of Endeavour’s gaze, and so he looked back at the screen.

He had always known that Endeavour was not the most effusive of people, but still, in his imagination, he would have answered somewhat differently.

_Of course, I don’t regret it._

_It was fate that brought us together._

_I would do it all again, so that I could find you._

“Don’t make me say it,” Endeavour sighed.

Bixby laughed. “Say _what_ , old man?”

“I just . . . I just don’t understand why you get like this.”

_Get like this?_

“Well, it’s just natural, isn’t it, at the turning of the season?” Bixby replied. “We’re just a few weeks from New Year’s; it’s natural, isn’t it, to look back over the year, over one’s life, and take stock? To wonder, to be curious as to how things might have worked out differently?”

“No,” Endeavour said, simply, looking stern, his stubborn chin set in displeasure. He shook his head, then, slightly, in disapproval. “You read too much into this movie.”

Then, in a rush, the clouds seemed to lift from his face, and he pushed himself up against the cushions. 

“Wait,” Endeavour said. “You’re making me miss the best part.”

_“What?”_ Bixby cried, confused.

The best part? What was he on about?

On the screen, Jimmy Stewart was falling to pieces in a snow-swept graveyard, standing before a stone carved with this younger brother’s name.

“That’s a lie!” he shouted to Clarence, his bumbling guardian angel. “Harry Bailey went to war! Harry Bailey saved the life of every man on that transport!”

Well, all right, perhaps the acting was a bit over the top, a little dated, but still, Bix found it all distressing as hell, watching a grown man falling apart, nearly dissolving into tears.

Then, George Bailey grasped onto Clarence’s lapels and cried, “Where’s my wife, Clarence. Tell me! Where’s Mary?”

_“You’re not going to like it, George.”_

_“Tell me, Clarence. Where is she?”_

_“She never married. She’s an old maid.”_

_“Where’s Mary, Clarence? Where is she?”_

And finally, Clarence relented.

_“She’s just about to close up the library!”_

Endeavour leaned over and put a warm hand on Bix’s shoulder.

“Watch,” he said.

Bix furrowed his brow and watched the screen. And then, there was Donna Reed, coming out of the library doors, watching the anarchy and bedlam that was Pottersville with mistrustful eyes, clinging to her pocketbook as if she might need to use it as a shield to defend herself.

And Endeavour burst out laughing.

And that was just too much.

“What on earth is so amusing?” Bixby asked.

Endeavour snorted.

“It’s so ridiculous; I can certainly understand why in the Sodom of Pottersville Mary would prefer to work in the library. But why is she suddenly wearing glasses?”

“What?” Bixby asked. 

Endeavour looked at him, then, evidently delighted.

“She could see fine before. Has the lack of romantic attention rendered her suddenly myopic?” he asked.

Then he laughed that laugh that sounded like air being let out of a balloon, leaving Bixby to shake his head.

That’s it then?

Endeavour hadn’t been taking in the broader picture of the horrible scenario presented by the movie at all? The entire time, he’d been focused on this detail of the glasses, of the hackneyed trope that every unmarried and intelligent woman depicted in movies, must by definition, wear unattractive, wire-rimmed spectacles? 

_“Where’s our kids. I need you, Mary!”_ George shouted, grabbing her and spinning her around, while Mary shrieked and pulled away.

Endeavour snorted. “I’d scream, too. It doesn’t make any sense. The old man just told him that would happen. He’s completely missed the point of what he signed on for.”

“Hmmmm,” Bixby said.

For Bixby felt perhaps that he understood all too well how George might feel; he couldn’t help but sympathize with the man in his plight.

Of course, he wanted Mary to recognize him. Of course, he wanted her to say that he was the one for her, in any possible world. Of course, he wanted to believe that even a rift in the very fabric of reality could not sever the bond between them.

But the scenario, Bix understood, was not one that Endeavour could take at all seriously; for Endeavour, it really was just a farce. His thinking simply didn’t allow for any of those sorts of magical contingencies, of worlds and realities beyond.

Although to be fair, Endeavour seemed to find _this_ world complicated enough to be going on with.

But for Bixby, reality worked a bit differently; Bixby _did_ believe in all of it, in parallel universes and in worlds beyond, in the magical and miraculous meanings behind things—sometimes he half-believed even in his own smoke and mirrors.

For Bixby, it was possible that he and Endeaovur had met in a hundred different times and in a hundred different places.

For Bixby, there perhaps _could_ be a universe in which— trying to lift Pagan out of the doldrums after his break-up with Susan— Tony or Bruce or Kay or Pippa, or all of them, had drug him out to a party, to one of the first parties Bixby had ever held when he opened the house on Lake Silence, and he and Endeavour might have met six years ahead of schedule.

Or perhaps there was a universe in which Blenheim Vale never happened, one in which Endeavour had remained a police officer, one in which he came out to Lake Silence, to question him after the death of Bunny Corcoran.

Bix had heard the stories, of how Endeavour was wont to get his heart caught up in a case, falling for some girl or another who was, in fact, sometimes even the suspect of the crime.

“Well, if you have anything you’d like to add, you can call me at the Cowley CID,” DC Morse would say, handing Joss Bixby his card.

And Bix would smile his most suave Bixby smile and say, “I’ve something I’d like to add right now.”

“Oh?” Morse would ask.

“Yes,” Bix would say. “How about coming round and having a drink with me, when you’re off duty. What do you say, old man?”

And DC Morse would pause, looking perplexed.

And then… and this was the best part . . .

And then he’d _actually_ drop by, he’d actually do it.

Yes, Bix could imagine a hundred different ways in which reality might have arranged itself.

But above all, Bix believed in a guiding plan, in Providence, in destiny.

No matter what scenario he imagined, Bix could see only one ending—that, at the end of the tale, he and Endeavour ended up together, just as they ought to be.

“Are you all right?” Endeavour asked, his brow furrowed.

“Fine, old man.”

******

On the following afternoon, Bixby was back in his study, sealing the deal with a new shipping firm. He should have felt it, that pump of adrenaline stemming from a hand well-played, but instead, he felt restless, as if something that he couldn’t quite name was out of place.

Tomorrow, he would go up to Paris and sign all the paperwork, but for now, he felt done with it all, as if all of the luster had gone out of the game.

He got up from his desk and wandered down the hall, to Endeavour’s chaos of an office, where Endeavour sat, pounding away on his typewriter, sounding like a torrent of an August storm in the heart of December.

“Fancy a break?” Bixby asked. “I thought we’d go out into the woods. See if we find any mistletoe for the party. Do you want to?”

Endeavour cranked the carriage of the typewriter to the beginning of the line, considered it for a moment, musingly, and then looked up.

“Hmmmmmm,” he said. “Sure.”

***

Once Bixby was outside, walking amongst the spartan trees and filling his lungs deep with cold air that left his chest tingling with a rich and exhilarating burn, something inside him seemed to uncurl. It was good to be out in the woods. The snow clouds had lifted without their promise of snow, but the sky was a bright and impossible and aching December blue, and Endeavour’s stride matched his perfectly, as last autumn’s leaves crunched, wafting with sweetness, under their feet.

“Look,” Endeavour said. “There’s some. Look there.”

Bixby looked up, and, at the end of a branch, he saw it: a bundle of small leaves, like a bunched sphere of green, at the end of a barren branch.

“Ah,” he replied.

And it was just the game he needed, the perfect break from it all—something simple and physical. It was just his aim against the mistletoe. It was still a competition—only one that had been distilled into its purest form.

He backed away from the tree where the mistletoe grew; it was a tricky shot, but Bix knew that, as with most things he set his mind to, he could pull it off.

He took a few running steps back, eyeing the bunch of leaves appraisingly, drew his arm back, loosened the grip of his fingertips, and then sent the football spiraling, flying on towards its target.

And then it was soaring, like a brown thrush cutting through the blue air, just over the fork in the branch. And then it fell to the ground, into a soft explosion of old leaves, nestling somewhere in the near distance.

“That was very good,” Endeavour said, as the football landed.

Then he turned to him.

“Next time, knock some down.”

“Hmmmm,” Bix said.

He cast Endeavour a glance, searching his face for any signs of sarcasm—but, no, Endeavour had meant to be encouraging; he was watching Bix expectantly, his blue eyes solemn, his austere face pink with the cold.

“Did you see where it dropped?” Bix asked.

“Oh,” Endeavour said. “No. I didn’t actually.”

They turned, then, and fell back into pace, walking together to the general area where the football had fallen. Trouble was, a brown, oblong ball was the perfect shape and shade to blend into the camouflage of the forest floor. Bix didn’t quite know how far the thing had flown, as his eyes had been on the mistletoe, and so he scanned the ground, looking for any disturbance in the natural chaos of the leaves.

“There,” Endeavour said.

“Where?” Bix asked.

“It’s just there. Right by your foot. Don’t you see it? If it were a snake, it would have bitten you.”

“Ah,” Bixby said. He reached down, sweeping the football up from the leaves, and straightened.

And then he stopped short.

Suddenly, Endeavour’s words gave Bixby pause.

_If it were a snake, it would have bitten you?_

Bix had been wondering about how Endeavour would feel, after all of these years, having his old colleagues staying at the house for two weeks, how he would weather such a prolonged collision of his worlds. Would it be awkward, becoming accustomed to the new dynamics that doubtlessly had sprung up in his absence, such as the marriage of Joan and Jim Strange? Would he feel compelled to hide the notebooks he so often scribbled in, as he didn't have the excuse of needing one because he was on a case? 

But he hadn’t stopped to think: How was he, Bix, going to weather it?

It was a difficult thing, keeping up appearances, to impeccably hide one’s true self in house full of guests, after all—and, as the years had passed, Bix had more and more often allowed the old mask to slip.

Could Joss Bixby withstand such scrutiny, such prolonged proximity to an entire houseful of detectives? Not to mention that pathologist, who had already made it clear that he considered him a complete fraud.

Endeavour, ever the student of language, had always had an interest in Bixby’s natural accent—he even seemed to get a bit of a charge out of it, in much the same way that Bix had always gotten a little thrill out of seeing Endeavour looking windswept and a bit fey in that kilt. 

Now, when Endeavour pressed himself warm and flush against him and said, “I want to hear you talk,” Bix knew just what he meant. And it was flattering, really, that someone should love him for who he was, and for who he had been, not just for the success he had later become.

The downside to it all was that, every now and then, Endeavour would pop out with something that couldn’t _quite_ be traced to Lorraine or to Oxford or to Lincolnshire, trying out what words and phrases he had picked up, sometimes using them correctly, sometimes incorrectly, however the fancy struck him.

Suddenly, Bixby’s imagination flew into overdrive, and he could see Endeaovur, standing at the front door, greeting the Thursdays and the Stranges and the Fancys and Mr. Bright and DeBryn.

_“Get in here quick, y’all. You’re letting all the warm air out._

_What? Were you born in a barn?“_

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Was it perhaps, too late to call the whole thing off?

But no. It would be good, having them all here. And what’s more, Bixby felt he sort of owed them all a free holiday.

Strangely enough, it wasn’t those first years they had spent in France, miles away from the place of Endeavour's exile on Lake Silence, but rather those very trips to Oxford that had seemed to help Endeavour toward finding his feet again. Retuning to Oxford and to his onetime career as a detective had given him the chance to prove himself—to himself, if to no one else. The chance to leave Oxford on his own terms, rather than leaving him to feel as if he’d been forced out. It was the difference between choosing his new life here rather than fleeing . . . well . . .

Whatever it was that he had been fleeing when he had taken to holing himself up in that old lake house.

And then Bixby paused, almost mid-step, remembering his question from the night before. 

Suddenly, he realized how his words might be turned, rotated on their axis, to form rather a different equation.

_Wasn't it worth it, that night of betrayal, those long months in prison, since it set you on the path to the night we met?_

_Was it worth it, losing a part of yourself, so that you could find me?_

Bix looked up, sharply, suddenly feeling slightly ill.

He wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to say: I didn’t mean it like that.

But Endeavour was standing there, his stern face screwed up in concentration, aiming a fir cone at the bunch of mistletoe. 

He threw it.

And predictably, missed by a mile.

He turned to him then and shrugged, smiling that daffy smile that he rarely showed to anyone else.

And Bixby realized: At this moment, he’s forgotten. He’s already forgiven you, forgave you before you realized you should ask forgiveness. At this moment, he’s happy.

To bring it all up again now, just to make himself feel better, seemed all the crueler. So he let it go, just as Endeavour let another fir cone fly, a heftier one, one that almost made the mark. 

“Those trees,” Endeavour said, suddenly then, gesturing down the path. “That one there. And that one there. Those are the end zone.” 

Bixby smiled, understanding right away, for once, what was expected of him. He took a few running steps back, drew back his arm, and let the ball fly, sending it soaring. Endeavour leapt and caught it in his arms, landed, turned, and started running in the opposite direction.

And Bixby started after. 

It was exhilarating, the cold in his lungs and the warmth in his chest, building and building as he ran on, suddenly buoyant, suddenly weightless. 

Endeavour couldn’t throw worth a damn, but he was fast, even though he did have a weird sort of way of running—he held his upper body so stiffly that it hardly seemed to move, but his legs flew out before him as he went like those of a lanky colt. He looked awkward as hell, but it worked for him, it got him there. 

If he could be persuaded to pump his arms a bit, he might outrun Bix, as he had the more lightweight frame. But, as it was, Bixby managed to overtake him, throwing himself at him in a classic tackle, pulling him down into the drifting leaves, before Endeavour could make the touchdown.

Endeavour rolled over at once and raised a knee, catching him lightly in the ribs. It was the same move that he had used on that first night that they had gone out into the woods at Lake Silence, but gentler, just enough to push Bixby off, just enough to allow him to take up the ball and scramble away, out from underneath him. 

He took off running again, leaving Bixby to leap up and give chase.

“It doesn’t work that way,” Bixby protested, even though, from the devilish smile on Endeavour’s face, it was clear he knew all too well that he was cheating, but that he simply didn’t give a damn about the rules and regulations of American football.

Which, in fairness, he probably didn’t.

Endeavour spiked the ball down to the ground in triumph just seconds before Bixby tackled him again, rolling him again in the leaves, and he was breathless, laughing. And then Bixby was laughing, too.

It was just like those days when they had first met in the woods in Lake Silence.

And also nothing like them, too.

They used to travel about, each in his own thick fog, each hidden behind his own mask—in the guise of Joss Bixby and in the guise of Pagan—until some wayward spark met through the mist and ignited, leaving them to look clearly at one another, leaving them as merely two people trapped in the lies of their own devising.

And each waved a hand, clearing a way through the mist for the other, until each showed his own true face, letting the debonair host of elegant parties and the bitter young man, holed up in his bohemian shack with his angst and his alcohol and his fear, to fall away like shadows, leaving them their own best and truest and simplest selves.

Bix rolled him over in the leaves and Endeavour was still laughing, and it was such a sweet and aching echo of their first days together that Bixby couldn't help but reflect on how far they had come.

They were younger now, than those brittle personas they once so clung to, and older, too. Much wiser, here, as two overgrown idiots wresting in the leaves, than they were in their evening suits, watching one another from across a glittering room.

Now, when they kissed, the kissed not only under the cover of starlight, but under even impossibly clear skies, even those sharpest of blue ones that shone bright and blazing, despite the low angle of the golden sun, so much so that it seemed to be some sort of miracle, some glitch in natural law that occurred only in the month of December.

**********

It was late by the time Bixby arrived home the next night from Paris. He closed the car door in satisfaction. For him, the Christmas holidays had officially begun. He was playing hooky, he was skiving off, and that was fine, then.

Upstairs, Endeavour was asleep, his hair wild across the pillows. He was wearing his white flannel pajamas with the red buttons, but he must have decided that it was too hot, after all, because he had one long leg kicked out over the blankets. He didn’t stir as Bixby got ready for bed, and Bix didn’t wake him. He kept such odd hours sometimes; it seemed best to let him sleep. 

Bixby straightened the rumpled covers on his side of the bed, and then collapsed into it. And he must have fallen asleep as soon as he closed his eyes, because, in what felt like the very next moment, he woke with a jolt, startled by the sight of a pair of luminous eyes, preternaturally large, looming over him.

In his confusion, it took him a moment to realize that it was Endeavour, wearing Bixby’s own, old ridiculous glasses, the ones that Esme had bought for him a few years back as a disguise so that he could visit Endeavour in hospital, after the collapse of Cranmer House.

They had made him to look like his own deranged identical twin. And on Endeavour, they looked even more alarming, magnifying his already overlarge eyes so that he looked a bit like an alien overlord. 

“You look scary as hell in those things, old man,” Bixby said, once he recovered himself.

It was the wrong thing to say, because Endeavour quirked a smile, as if he quite liked the idea.

“Really?” he asked.

“Mmmm,” Bixby replied. “Why are you wearing them?” 

“Why didn’t you wake me?” Endeavour countered.

“I didn’t like to,” Bix said. “You seemed knackered. Where did you find those things, anyway? Why are you wearing them?”

“You were gone a long time today,” Endeavour replied.

Then he smiled.

“I think I’ve gone slightly nearsighted in your absence.”

Bixby laughed, then, not so much at Endeavour’s terrible joke, but because he could see just where Endeavour was going with this.

He wasn’t going to say it. He wasn’t going to say those words that Bixby had thought he wanted to hear.

_“Oh, Bix, I’d do it all again.”_

But that was fine, then.

Bixby found that he didn’t want him to, anyway. Endeavour had always been honest with him; he didn’t want him ever to feel as if he had to lie.

Endeavour smiled uncertainly as Bixby laughed, as if appraising his reaction, as if wondering if he understood.

I can’t go to the edge, his look seemed to say. This is as close as I get.

I can’t pretend to be happy that what happened happened. I can’t say that I would willingly relive the past, even to please you.

But I am happy that I found you. That I’m here with you now.

“Oh, have you?" Bix asked. "And just think, only yesterday you found the mistletoe and spotted the football." 

“Hmmmmm,” Endeavour hummed. 

And then, the eyes that looked right through him at a party and then looked as if they’d like to reduce the band to ashes were full of a deeper, fresher, bluer flame, the blue of moonlit snow.

“Merry Christmas, Joss Bixby,” Endeavour said, in a half-assed, low and mournful English imitation of Donna Reed.

And then he lowered himself down, so that those damned clunky glasses bumped against Bixby’s face, and kissed him with a kiss as soft as the water on the dock in Oxfordshire, a kiss that was more than real magic.

Because, as it turned out, much to Joss Bixby’s surprise, there was no real magic.

Only love. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might seem a little rough on Max, but it’s Bixby’s POV, and I really can’t see them getting along...  
> Also, in Morse’s defense, for all the kvetching Bix does, he doesn’t really do all that much to help. (Other than take hours to get himself ready XD )

As the day of their guests’ arrival drew nearer, Bix found himself more and more convinced that the entire visit might well prove to be a complete and utter disaster.

In the weeks following New Year’s, the party might break up, couples might be expected to go their separate ways, using the house as a springboard for side trips to Paris or to the countryside; but, during the days leading up to Christmas and through New Year’s Day, they would all be together.

Relentlessly together.

This was to be no sparkling gala of the sort that Bixby had once thrown in his days at Lake Silence—complete with a full band and a dance floor glossy as glass, spinning under aqua and rose and electric green lights, with card tables and roulette wheels in darkened, smoke-filled rooms, with champagne fountains and two stocked bars, glittering dangerously with liqueur bottles of every color and hue, with blue gardens, soft and bright from the glow of Japanese lanterns, providing lovers their own sphere of reverent magic, far from the noise of the crowds.

No. This was to be a good, old-fashioned family Christmas celebration.

One in which an assortment of people who had less in common than they realized would be forced to spend larger quantities of time together than perhaps might be deemed prudent.

The key was to give their guests something to do, something that would keep them from merely sitting in the drawing room as the conversation veered from problematic topic to topic.

But Endeavour seemed to have nothing planned whatsoever.

“Shall we go to your concert?” Bixby had suggested.

A winter walk through the woods, up to the picturesque little church in the village for an evening of Mozart and Handel and traditional carols seemed as if it might make for the perfect festive little jaunt in Bixby’s opinion, but Endeavour shot that idea down right away.

“Why would I haul them two miles though the cold just to hear me sing? We aren’t that good,” he said.

Bixby had rather thought they were, but then, his standards weren’t quite as exacting as Endeavour’s.

“Well, we could drive over, then,” Bixby said.

“No,” Endeavour replied. “I don’t like that idea. If one or two people wanted to come, that would be all right, but I don’t want to feel as if I’m dragging people up there to hear us sing in some sort of ‘enforced group activity.’”

An ‘enforced group activity’ was precisely what Bixby was aiming for.

It was a poor host who neglected his guests. What were they supposed to do with the others, if only a few attended the concert? Leave them on their third evening in France sitting with a bag of crisps before the telly?

“We could all decorate the tree, I suppose,” Bixby said.

A traditional tree trimming, such as those one saw in Victorian illustrations might be nice. George and Shirley’s daughter must be old enough now to toddle about; she might enjoy hanging a few shining baubles on the lower branches.

But Endeavour looked at him as if he had gone quite mad.

“What?” he asked, incredulously. “That’s _our_ tree. I don’t want anyone else decorating _our_ tree.”

Bixby shrugged. Endeavour had never had a tree growing up, as his mother’s Quaker beliefs led her not to go in for such things, and his father had been too cheap. So he supposed that Endeavour’s protectiveness over the tree was his way of making up for lost time.

“Well, we could always play cards, I suppose,” Bixby said.

It was the wrong thing to say.

Endeavour looked even more affronted by that idea. He was terrible at cards—he was always wool-gathering, it seemed, couldn’t keep his mind on the game, couldn’t remember what card he had played two rounds earlier. He didn’t seem to mind indulging Bixby’s whim at gatherings of their friends here in France, but he wouldn’t want to play in front of his old colleagues from Oxford, with whom he was no doubt determined to keep up a good front.

Well. That was fine, then.

They’d just play it by ear, one supposed.

But where to put them all up? That was also a question worth consideration. The house here in Lorraine was not half so large as the house on Lake Silence, and, although they had twelve bedrooms, the overall dimensions of the place were rather more snug.

Strange and Joan, Bix had decided to put at the far bedroom at the opposite wing of the house, the farthest from his and Endeavour’s. This way, Strange wouldn’t even _see_ he or Endeavour coming in or out of their suite, as he was the one of the group who was perhaps the least comfortable with their relationship.

Oh, he was all right with them individually. And even with them together, it seemed, for the most part—as long as he didn’t have to think about it too much.

Which was as good a philosophy for getting through life as any, Bixby supposed.

And then there was DeBryn. He was quite the opposite of Strange, but nonetheless problematic.

DeBryn, it transpired, was even more inclined to their sort of relationship than even Bix himself was. He didn’t have a problem with the fact they were a couple.

It was Bix, personally, that DeBryn had a problem with.

If only that Edward chap was coming along. He might keep DeBryn distracted. If Edward were there, DeBryn might be so busily engaged in conversation with him, that he might not notice if Endeavour happened to exclaim something along the lines of, _“Oh. There’s that cheese knife. I’ve been looking all over hell and half of Georgia for that.”_

Hmmmmm.

But when Bix had asked Endeavour if DeBryn was bringing the fellow along, Endeavour had looked at him as if he had completely taken leave of his senses.

“Max is still working as a Home Office pathologist. He’s not going to want to flaunt his private life in front of his colleagues, no matter how understanding they might be. I mean, it’s fine for me, isn’t it? I’m well out of it, after all, but Max still has to work with Thames Valley.” 

Endeavour frowned, then, looking thoughtful for a moment. “And besides. I don’t think they get along all the time. I think they’re both the sort who like to be alone sometimes.”

 _“Alone?”_ Bixby asked.

“Yes,” Endeavour replied. “Just to have some time to themselves.”

Bixby snorted at that. What a strange man, DeBryn was.

“Well, that’s just . . . weird.”

Endeavour shrugged.

Well. Who knew how this would work?

Again, they would just have to wing it, that was all. 

Something that Bixby—who had spent years crafting and honing and shaping his image, getting down the accent, the details, the clothes, making sure he planned everything just so— absolutely dreaded.

“Oh, and did I tell you?” Endeavour said. “Madame Zumofen is going to Switzerland. To see her daughter. Esme and Guillaume’s aunt. She’s had a new baby.”

“What?” Bixby cried. “ _Switzerland?_ ”

“Well, the family is Swiss, you know,” Endeavour said.

Bixby sputtered. It wasn’t that she was going to _Switzerland_ that had caught Bixby so off-guard. It was the fact that she was going to be leaving right as they were getting ready to host a houseful of guests.

Endeavour, finally, seemed to understand.

“Oh, she’ll be back,” he volunteered. “On the twenty-ninth.”

“Who is going to cook for all of these people in the meanwhile?” Bixby cried. “I could have gotten a caterer, had I known . . . anything. By now, everything will be all booked up, old man.”

“Esme and Guillaume said they would help me,” Endeavour said. “They want to. They remember the Thursdays well, you know. It will be all right. It will be fun.”

Endeavour’s culinary skills he was familiar with, and so he held little hope there. But the kids . . .

“Can they actually . . . cook?” Bix asked. 

“Their whole family are chefs,” Endeavour said. “I’m sure with the three of us together, we’ll manage.”

That didn’t do much to answer Bix’s question.

If people so naturally followed in their predecessor’s footsteps, he’d be a farmer, and, as it was, he couldn’t keep a goddamned house plant alive without help from the staff.

And Endeavour’s father had been a cab driver, and he’d had his driver’s license revoked twice over now.

Yes, the whole thing wasn’t looking too promising, truth be told.

But, as they say: Can’t never could.

Hmmmmmm. 

***

On the day of their guest’s arrival, Bix woke up to find Endeavour gone, his side of the bed long grown cold. He rolled over and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table.

Sweet Jesus.

It was going on half twelve.

He pulled a dressing gown on over his pajamas and stumbled down the stairs in search of coffee, only to hear copious and dramatic weeping emanating from the kitchen, punctuated by Endeavour’s low and rounded, soothing voice.

He crept down the flight of steps leading to the kitchen cautiously, following the sound, half-fearful of what he might find there. He pushed open the door, and saw Esme, sitting at the table under the window lined with terra cotta pots of herbs and mint, her face buried in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

Guillaume looked uncomfortable as hell, shifting his weight from one lanky leg to the other.

Bixby sought Endeavour’s face for some sort of explanation.

“She told Marcel not to come to the party tonight,” Endeavour said.

At that, Esme burst into another round of weeping.

Ah. That had to be it.

Poor kid. First heartbreak, worst heartbreak, as they always said.

“What?” Bixby asked. “Did he break it off with her right before Christmas? That’s rather bad form.”

Esme’s head snapped up at that, and she sat up, drawing herself to her full height, her emotions seeming to change in an instant, with a speed with which only those between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five were capable of achieving. 

“No,” she said, vehemently. “I broke it off with him.”

“But . . . why?” Bixby asked. “If you’re so miserable now, then. . . .”

“It can never work! He has no politics!” she cried.

Guillaume rolled his eyes.

“I saw that!” Esme snapped.

“It’s a stupid reason to break it off with someone, that’s all,” Guillaume replied.

Esme opened her mouth to protest, but Bix felt that, even though her brother had expressed himself rather unfortunately, that he did, rather, have a point.

“That’s is an awfully unromantic reason to reject someone,” he said. “Endeavour doesn’t give a damn about politics.”

Endeavour scowled, leaving Bix perhaps to wonder if he had done the wrong thing, dragging them into this, but, before Endeavour could weigh in one way or the other, Esme cut him off. 

“But nor do you,” she said. “So it doesn’t matter. You need to be passionate about the same things, if something is going to work.”

Endeavour’s scowl deepened, and Bix could tell at once that they were both thinking the same thing.

Was there anything that they were both passionate about? Besides each other?

There was . . . they did both have a keen interest in cars. . . . one supposed . . .

Although that hardly seemed a foundation upon which to build a relationship . . .

“No,” Bixby said, at last. “You really don’t.”

“But of course, you do. How else can you really ever hope to understand one another?” Esme asked.

The honest answer, Bix supposed, was that you couldn’t. It was quite possible to spend a lifetime with someone who slept on a pillow a mere few inches from your own, and not have the slightest notion as to what might be circulating within his or her head.

But he didn’t know if Esme was quite prepared to hear that.

So, instead, he changed tactics.

“Are you happy, that you broke it off with him?” Bix asked. “Because you don’t look very happy.”

“No,” Esme sniffed. “I miss him already,” she said, the words seeming to wrench out of her against her will.

“I miss how stupid he is,” she wailed, burying her face once more in his hands.

Hmmmm.

It led one to wonder just how enamored _he_ must be of _her._

“The answer is simple,” Bix said. “Just invite him to come along, after all.”

“I can’t do that,” she cried. 

“Why ever not?”

“I just . . . I just can’t,” she said.

She sat, considering for a while; then she took a deep breath and got up from the chair.

“Well,” she said, at last, with an air of a martyr barely able to rise above her grief, but persevering valiantly. “It’s best to get on with things.”

“Where’s the goose? Didn’t you take it out of the freezer last night?” she asked.

“Oh,” Endeavour said, slightly stunned, it seemed, by the abrupt change in her mood. “I forgot. I only took it out just this morning.” 

“Well,” she said, with a sigh, examining the bird sitting in the sink, doubtfully. “We’ll just put it in on low heat to begin with. Maybe we can. I don’t know. Speed the thawing process up a little.”

“All right,” Endeavour said.

Bixby stood in the doorway, watching them all for a moment, uncertainly. Had the clouds passed that easily, then? Was something approximating dinner actually underway?

Well. Best to leave them to it, for him to go up and shower, lest he be caught by their guests still in his pajamas.

Long experience in entertaining had taught him one thing: there might well be some rough patches, but everything was salvageable.

...... Or maybe not.

He had scarcely come out of their rooms a few hours later when he heard it: Wagner’s bombastic _Das Rheingold_ , cranked up at full blast, loud enough so that Endeavour could hear it from any part of the house.

Which was most likely the point.

Bixby sighed.

It was hardly the thing for a holiday party.

He went down the stairs, which seemed almost to be shaking with the reverberations blasting from Endeavour’s record player, and then went into the drawing room.

Perhaps they might have something a little more cheerful, something more apropos to the day playing when their guests arrived?

He set the needle off to the side and took the album off the turntable, replacing it with one of his own, nodding in satisfaction as the jazzy strains of Louis Armstrong’s of “Christmas Night in Harlem” started up, as bright and as sharp as the glitter of a winter starlight.

And then, right on cue, there was a thunder of footsteps on the lower stairs, and then Endeavour was flying into the room, his burgundy jumper covered in flour and his hair curling frenetically, a smear of familiar pink frosting across his forehead.

“Why are you messing about with my record player?” he demanded.

Bixby laughed. “Sorry, old man. I just thought it was a little more jubilant, lighter mood we were going for.”

“But I’m not in a jubilant or lighter mood,” Endeavour countered.

“How immensely you’ll delight your guests, then,” Bixby said.

And, here, at last, was the question.

Why the hell were they doing this, if Endeavour was so anxious about it all?

“These are your friends, you know. Not mine,” Bixby said.

For some reason, Endeavour looked stricken at that.

“They’re your friends, too,” he said.

“Mmmmm,” Bixby replied.

Really, they weren’t.

But . . . 

Well.

Ironic, wasn’t it?

For all of his parties, for all of his grand gestures, what real friends, did he have, truth be told?

Funny that, considering his questionable past, that the closest thing he should have to friends should be a group of police officers. A group that he knew through Endeavour, of all people, a man with all the social grace of a badger with a toothache.

Endeavour glanced at the clock on the mantle, looked startled, and then ran back down the hall toward the kitchen, as if he were competing in some sort of mad relay race.

“Endeavour?” Bix called, after him.

And then Bixby looked out the window, and startled with a jolt.

It wasn’t the hands on the clock that had propelled Endeavour’s last-minute dash; it was the sight in the nearby window—the sight of three black taxicabs pulling up into their circular drive. 

“Endeavour?” Bix called again, more sharply.

Oh, hell. He didn’t want to face them all alone. Without Endeavour there, serving as a bridge, he felt terribly on display, somehow.

“Endeavour. Get your arse up here right now. Endeavour!”

“I’m coming. I’m up to my elbows in . . . can you? Just . . . I’ll be right there.” 

And then there was a wild cacophony of falling pans followed by a sob from Esme.

“Oh, never mind,” Bixby hissed. 

He tore through the hall to the front door and ripped it open.

And then he put on his most gracious Joss Bixby smile.

******

Bixby headed down the front steps, right as the lot of them began spilling out of the line of cabs that had pulled up before the house. More than a year had passed since they had all met, but they all seemed more or less the same, with only slight differences.

“’Lo, Bix,” Strange said, straightening as he struggled out of the small black car. 

“Hello, Strange,” Bix replied. "How was the trip?" 

“Fine. Long, though. I’m hungry enough to eat a horse. What are we having? Not tiny arty little French bits, I hope.”

Bixby grimaced.

For all he knew, dinner would consist of half-frozen goose and Tottenham cake, but there you are.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be surprised,” Bix said.

And Strange nodded, smiling.

It was odd: Jim Strange seemed to have . . . well . . . it seemed funny to say of someone taller and larger than himself . . but, he seemed to have “grown up” somehow, carrying himself with a new air of gravitas.

There was something new about Joan, too, something that was infinitely more womanly than girlish, her heels crunching on the cobblestone with a new sense of decisiveness as she stepped out of the car and around to the boot to retrieve her case.

The Thursdays and Max DeBryn were the same as ever, Fred Thursday’s hair streaked perhaps a bit more liberally with gray. Fancy, too, seemed utterly unchanged, as he bounced about unpacking the luggage, as good-natured and boyish as always.

“Think we brought enough to tide us through?” Fancy asked, laughing, as he pulled a collapsible pram out of the cab's boot.

Shirley frowned in disapproval. Her heart-shaped face was slightly fuller than it had been the last time Bix had seen her, and seemed to be glowing with an odd sort of serenity bordering on euphoria, as she carried her daughter on her hip, perched up as if she were a Tsarina.

Mr. Bright, Bix had prepared to see looking a bit frailer, considering his advancing age—but no, he stood as straight as ever as he helped Fancy with the barrage of things they had brought for the baby, the joy of having a child in his life once more seeming to have instilled a new light in his sharp, bird-like eyes.

Bixby went down the line of cabs, paying the drivers, before coming to help Fancy and Mr. Bright with the luggage.

He could sense, as they greeted him, that they were half-looking over his shoulder; that, as happy as they were to see him, that they were looking for someone else.

Of course, they were.

It was all perfectly natural, after all, that they might expect the man who had actually _invited_ them all here to be _somewhere_ about the place. 

Bix was just pulling a folding baby cot out of the boot, when he heard Thursday’s deep rumble.

“Morse,” he said, in simple acknowledgement, as if Endeavour was just reporting into the nick for the morning shift.

“Hello, Sir,” Endeavour replied. “Mrs. Thursday.”

And thank god, the star of the show, the eponymous character, so to speak, was putting in an appearance at last.

Bixby turned to look up to where Endeavour was striding down the steps, hurrying to help with the cases.

And then he startled in surprise.

What in the name of all that was holy?

Endeavour was wearing those glasses. Those ridiculous glasses that made him to look like an overbearing owl, the ones that magnified his already overlarge irises into twin foreboding beams of pure and relentless scrutiny.

Bixby _knew_ it. He _knew_ he would regret it, telling Endeavour how damn intimidating he looked in those things.

This would be his crutch then; he would be putting up a front as much as Bix was— Bix returning to the familiar mask he wore at Lake Silence, to hide his old self, Endeavour putting up a façade to hide his new one.

If Endeavour couldn’t remember the word for something, if he forgot something someone had told him ten minutes before, and he denied it, who would dare to point it out, who would hazard to contradict him, under that severe gaze?

The best defense was a good offense, one supposed.

My, what jovial hosts they would be.

Well. No point in worrying about that now. Bixby ushered them all into the house as quickly as was possible, trying to divert their guests’ attention as best as he could from their old colleague’s alarming appearance.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Win Thursday asked, as soon as she stepped into the foyer. 

Sweet mercy. From the sounds of what was going on in the kitchen, there was quite a bit that she could do to help. But she had just come off a flight and then had a long drive— to set her to work at once in the kitchen would be anathema to any standard of hospitality Bixby had ever been raised to.

“Oh, no,” Bixby reassured her. “Why don’t you . . . . “

“Yes, actually,” Endeavour said. “Thank you, Mrs. . . .”

At once, they both stopped short and exchanged glances, trying each to make themselves wordlessly understood by the other, eyes wide—Endeavour’s alarmingly so behind the clunky chemist’s glasses. 

Bixby won out in the end.

“No, no. Wouldn’t hear of it, Win. You’ve had a long trip, after all. Why don’t you just sit down, and I’ll make you a drink?”

****

After everyone had the chance to get settled, Bix showed them all to their rooms. When he came back down the stairs, the Wagner was back on, but there was a tray of fruit and cheese and bread on the coffee table in the drawing room.

Endeavour had disappeared again. 

But it was all right. As the guests trickled back down the stairs after freshening themselves up, they fell into a natural burble of conversation. They didn’t all work together as they once did, but rather were divided up at different stations, so they had plenty to catch up on.

The funny thing was, Bixby wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

There was a time when artful mingling, gliding from one group to the next, came to him as naturally as breathing. But it seemed odd now, playing that old part, especially here in the very room, standing on the very stretch of carpet, where Endeavour had once rolled him over, straddling him and pinning his wrists to the floor, demanding to know his real name.

He walked over to where Shirley and Joan stood near the window, looking out at the lawn spanned with dark firs.

“So . . . how was it?” Joan asked, hesitantly.

“Don’t listen to any of those harpies’ horror stories,” Shirl replied. “It’s not as bad as all that. I felt quite indomitable, to tell you the truth. You get a huge adrenaline rush, you know.”

….. And Bixby turned around abruptly on his heel. He had no wish to involve himself in _that_ conversation.

As it was, he had a feeling he might be the third to hear of some momentous upcoming event.

Or, quite possibly, even the second.

He went over to the center of the room, where Strange and Fancy were standing around the fruit and cheese tray, two glasses of Scotch in hand. The two were opposites in so many ways; surely, he wouldn’t be interrupting anything so ... personal.... if he joined them.

“You’re joking,” Fancy said, “How could you possibly support him? He’s a horrible old Tory, the worst of the lot.” 

And Bixby wheeled around. Esme was right. He had no real interest in politics, and he certainly had no interest in getting into any sort of argument with his guests over the whole business, all of which Bix found to be rather vulgar.

He turned, then, and went out toward the dining room, where he found DeBryn, standing near a corner, talking to Thursday in low tones. Odd how the very man he had thought to avoid was now looking to be the safest option.

“Did you know Morse was wearing glasses now?” DeBryn asked. “Had you heard anything about it?”

“No,” Thursday said. “Not too surprising, though, is it? Lad always has his nose in a book.”

“He’s awfully young to be going nearsighted,” DeBryn said. “Given his history, it could be indicative of . . .”

And Bixby turned away, snorting softly to himself. How like DeBryn to begin dissecting everyone and everything right away. 

Endeavour wearing glasses wasn’t _“indicative”_ of anything. The only thing it was i _ndicative_ of, Bixby would have loved to have told him, is that he wanted to prevent you asking such questions in the first place. . . .

Fortunately, just then there was a ring of the doorbell; Esme and Guillaume’s parents had arrived, saving him for a space from having to handle the Cowley lot alone, and, once he had them fixed up with drinks, the house, miraculously, began to smell of food.

Soon, Guillaume came to the top of the stairs, looking like a man who had just managed to haul himself out of the depths of Dante’s Inferno.

“We have dinner,” he said.

****

So.

Eating is good.

Eating is one thing that they have in common.

Perhaps one might hope that the French air would get to them, that they would spin out this dinner, mulling over the wine, talking on grander topics, hypothetical and philosophical ones, subjects that would foster conversation rather than contention.

Bixby took another sip of wine and looked out over the table; everyone was getting along famously, it seemed. Mr. Bright was sitting with Dulcie Elizabeth perched on his knee—allowing Shirl the chance to have a meal without juggling a toddler—and looking absolutely delighted to take on the job.

DeBryn’s round face had relaxed into the very picture of serenity as he sat back in his chair, drinking at his ease, and Bixby found himself relaxing in sympathy with the man, after all.

It must be a grim sort of world he inhabited for the bulk of his working day, each day and every day. It must make for a welcome change, sitting at a candlebright table laid out with glass and silver and china, strewn artfully with fir cones and holly.

Or perhaps DeBryn’s pleased look came from the fact that he had managed another sort of holiday.

Perhaps he had family back home—family who, Christmas after Christmas, badgered him to bring some nice young woman home.

Something that, in Bixby’s opinion, was never going to happen.

“It’s like they say, isn’t it? There’s no bread like there is in France,” Strange said, popping a sizable chunk into his mouth.

Strange, ever politic, had the right idea. The fineness of the bread was something they could all agree upon.

Joan glanced up at him and smirked wryly, and Bixby found he couldn’t help but smile at sight of them.

Joan and Strange did look right together somehow—sitting next to one another with the ease of a couple that had been together for much longer than they had been. It was as if, in Strange, Joan had found her perfect counterbalance, someone solid and unassuming, someone to be there for when she needed it, when she requested it.

And, at all other times, to stay the hell out of her way.

Bix flicked a glance towards Thursday’s lined and dogged face and then to Endeavour’s, his stubborn jaw working on a piece of bread and his eyes sharp behind the awful glasses. One might wonder what brought them together as such fast friends, Thursday and Endeavour—the copper of the old school and the failed Greats scholar—but, the truth of it was, they were just the same, both filled with a sense of certainty that could be grating at times.

If Endeavour and Joan had managed somehow to get together, Bixby felt they would have had rather a rough time of it.

Morse and her father, her father and Morse. Two peas in a pod, they were. Always speaking to her from on high.

Bixby could shrug it off, Endeavour’s exasperated sighs, the know-it-all, didactic little speeches about some such thing or another. But, as a young woman trying to prove herself in a world tilted against her, such an attitude from her so-called helpmate would be enough to send Joan beyond all patience. 

In Strange, it seemed, Joan had found someone to inhabit the space beside her in just the way she wanted: solidly there, but not hovering, not trodding on her toes.

And the tension between she and her parents appeared to have eased as well. Thursday seemed to realize that he had missed his mark. To have finally learned that it’s only by letting our children go that we can ever hope to win them back again.

Esme’s parents, in that way, were wiser than Thursday. It was clear that her pale face was still tear-strained, but they knew better than to say one word about it. 

And after all, what could they say? If they told her there would be other young men, perhaps ones better suited, she would say, " _But I love him."_

And if they told her to accept Marcel as he was, if she loved him?

_"But he has no politics."_

No. There was nothing they could do. Far better to stand off from a distance and watch you daughter muddle through on her own.

Even Dulcie Elizabeth, at sixteen months, was reaching forward, stretching a tiny hand out toward the glitter of Mr. Bright’s wineglass, struggling to get out of his grasp.

Shirl turned to take her, and, as she did, the child cupped her mother's face, playfully patting at her cheeks. The beaming adoration between them was like a brightness visible, leading Bix to think all the gold halos on the ubiquitous paintings of the Madonna and child had nothing, really, to do with the holiness of the mother and baby in question.

But, fifteen years from now, most assuredly, Dulcie might well roll her eyes should Shirl so much as ask her a simple question.

It was a circle that was its own sort of love affair, perhaps more painful than any other, as the object was not to draw nearer to the beloved, but to let it go. And then to know forevermore that a piece of your heart is out there, spinning about in the universe. And that there is nothing you can do to shield it, but only hope that it can learn to protect itself.

For now, though, Dulcie stood cooing in Shirl's lap, with apples in her cheeks, and even impassive DeBryn couldn't help but manage a quirk of a smile. 

Bix felt, for the first time that day, that perhaps this reunion _was_ a good thing, after all.

They may not have much in common. But just a few years ago, Endeavour had followed a trail that had him out to a deserted quarry, and it was they who had come to his aid.

They might not be best mates, as Strange would say, but they held an understanding of one another that went deeper than that of casual friends. They had faced difficulty after difficulty together, and had come out to find themselves here, safely on the other side.

DeBryn turned to him to speak, then, and Bix felt that he was actually quite fond of the man, after all, if not for himself, then for the friend he had been to Endeavour.

“So. When did Morse start needing glasses?” DeBryn asked conspiratorially, his brow furrowed with concern.

And Bixby’s mellow mood burst like a soap bottle, sharpening into an edge of irritation.

And how could he blame Endeavour, really?

The man was a poet, after all. He _worked_ in words. He could easily speak for himself. It certainly wasn’t as if he was Endeavour’s keeper.

“I don’t know,” Bixby answered. ‘Why don’t you ask him?” 

DeBryn blinked for a moment, and then seemed to recover himself, as if, realizing perhaps he had mistepped.

Well. That was too damn bad.

Bix shoveled a forkful of roast vegetables in his mouth, pointedly ignoring the man.

But that wouldn’t do, either.

A good host helps his guests out of such awkward situations. He tried to cast about for something to say, something to shift the topic of conversation, but nothing came to mind.

Suddenly, from the front lawns, there came a strange sort of sound. As if someone was signing.

Carolers perhaps?

Or, at least, a lone caroler?

Although the tune sounded rather more like a love ballad than any traditional Christmas Carol.

Esme remained frozen in her seat, her eyes trained on her plate, her face turning a delicate shade of pink.

“I think it’s for you,” Endeavour said.

“It’s your house,” Esme countered.

Endeavour said nothing, only wiped his face with his napkin, tossed it down, and pushed back from his place at the table, heading out to the front door.

In a moment, Esme followed.

Guillaume rolled his eyes. There is a period of time, when the heart rears its wings, when perhaps an older sibling takes leave of her senses, leaving the younger sibling to fill the role of the older one. And so Guillaume rose, as stodgy and practical as a grandfather, and got up to move his chair over, to make another place at the table.

“Oh my god, you’re so _stupid!_ ” Bix heard Esme call out then, laughing. And then Marcel was laughing, too. 

And perhaps they were right. The better part of love is forgiveness, after all.

****

It was a tradition, in Fancy’s family, to play charades at Christmas.

Of course, it was.

Bixby could imagine it now: a whole troop of extroverted and buoyant Fancies, putting on theatrics for one another’s amusement before the twinkling lights of their Christmas tree. His father would have one of those deep and hearty laughs, his mother a melodious one—and all of their children would be as painfully upbeat as George was, even in the face of an ever-darkening world.

They had agreed, to begin with, that they would stick to films as the category. Bix could see the wisdom of it: even though their tastes doubtlessly differed, most would have seen the ads, at least, for recent movies.

Fancy took the first turn. He sat at a table, staring straight before him, miming the action of someone eating, slowly.

What the hell?

Endeavour stiffened in the seat beside him.

“Oh god,” he groaned. “It’s that awful movie.”

“What movie?” Bixby prompted. 

Endeavour watched Fancy cautiously, looking alarmed behind the heavy-framed glasses. “It’s that awful movie. The one that makes you feel as if you’ve had a glass full of lemonade spiked with LSD.”

And, thank God, they were amidst the one company that understood _that_ reference.

“Could you narrow it down, matey?” Strange asked. “That could be any number of films, these days.”

Fancy, however, was looking delighted, as if Endeavour’s answer made perfect sense.

“You’re getting there,” he said, laughing.

“You aren’t supposed to talk,” Shirl said, coolly.

“It’s that one where the man is getting older and older and then turns into a surreal space fetus,” Endeavour said. “I can’t recall the name of it.”

“2001: A Space Odyssey,” Strange blurted out.

“That’s it!” Fancy cried.

And so, it was Jim’s turn, and, immediately, he seemed to break out into some sort of distressing series of paroxysms.

“The cooking can’t have been that bad,” Endeavour said.

“Shall I send for a doctor?” DeBryn intoned.

And then they both snickered, terribly impressed with themselves.

Strange stopped, mid-motion.

“Ha ha,” he said.

“You aren’t supposed to talk,” Shirl reminded him.

“I know what this is,” Endeavour said. “It’s that film. That martial arts film.”

“Enter the Dragon?” Joan hazarded, turning to him.

Strange put his finger on his nose. “Enter the Dragon,” he agreed. 

Joan stood then, and began miming a complete and elaborate storyline, ending by sitting in some sort of chariot.

Endeavour slumped in his seat and crossed his arms. “It’s all very, ‘Soviet milk yields are up this quarter, comrade,” he snorted. “You look like that girl. With the balalaika. ‘It’s a gift.’”

“Dr. Zhivago,” Mrs. Thursday called out.

“Morse keeps getting all of them,” Fancy complained.

Joan scowled. “But he didn’t get it at _all,_ ” she protested. 

But Endeavour only took a sip of Scotch, a barely discernible smile just there on his haughty face.

Despite all the notebooks, and the tricks with ties and calendars, and the deadlines he wrote in bold print, his reputation as an absolute know-it-all was, at least amongst the bulk of them, safe and secure for now.

And all was right with his world.

*****

They ended up singing Christmas Carols—as hard as it was to believe that someone as rough around the edges as Thursday or as impassive as DeBryn or Shirl Fancy would go in for that sort of thing.

But, it was Christmas, so, there you are.

“Whew!” Fancy cried. “What did Morse put in this egg nog?”

Well. That probably didn’t hurt, either.

It turned out Strange was a whizz on the piano, banging out jazzy versions of Christmas Carols pristine enough that even Endeavour didn’t seem to object. They actually sounded quite good together.

The pitch and timber of his own voice wasn’t that far off from Endeavour's stronger and clearer one, and so, masked by his, Bix found himself letting his syllables linger, draw out a bit, softening to Tupelo honey.

Endeavour’s eyes, blue spotlights behind the thick glasses, met his: his sharp ear had caught the difference at once, of course. And then he smiled, as small smile meant just for him.

They had gone through quite the repertoire before Bixby noticed that two voices of their company, one on either on either side of their range, had gone missing. He looked up, across the hall to the doorway of the drawing room, and there he saw the shadows of the Thursdays, kissing beneath the mistletoe.

It was a sweet sight, this flowering of love in the depths of middle age—a tableau of a love hard fought for and hard sustained. There were times a few years ago when it looked as if they might call it quits, even after more than twenty-five years of marriage. 

It was difficult to say at what moment the bonds that bring us together reach a point that they are simply unbreakable, but, if there was such a love, they were the very picture of it.

But it was a sight, too, that left Bixby with a strange sort of pang. Of a bittersweet, melancholy feeling that he found he could not quite name. 

***

When Bixby woke to a sound of a whisper in his ear, the room was still dark, the scarcest shadow of indigo light just beginning its preternatural glow in the east.

“Bix?”

“Bix?”

Bix rolled over to see Endeavour’s face, pale in the darkness, hovering over his.

“What?” he murmured. 

“Let’s go downstairs,” Endeavour said.

“What? Why? It must be . . . ” he rolled over again and checked the clock on his nightstand. “It’s five in the morning, old man.”

“I want to give you your present," Endeavour explained. "But I don’t want anyone else to see what it is.”

Bixby smiled.

“Well. If it’s that sort of a present, perhaps you might just give it to me here.”

Endeavour sighed. “It’s nothing like that. Now come on.”

They stole down the stairs silently, like teenagers up to some mischief rather than grown men in their own home who had every right to do so. Slipping off to the tree without the others felt like a breach of etiquette somehow, but it was doubtful that they would get caught. Their houseguests would hardly stumble downstairs and wander about when they thought the rest of the household was still asleep.

In the drawing room, Endeavour went around behind the tree and plugged in the lights, immediately bathing the room in a soft and colorful glow, painting a mural of blurred red and green and blue on the high, white ceiling. Then he plopped himself down onto the carpet with his usual lanky grace and began to rummage amongst the packages, producing one that was unmistakably bottle-shaped, tied with a red ribbon around the neck.

Bixby crouched down beside him as Endeavour handed him the package.

“Merry Christmas,” Endeavour said.

Bixby took the bottle wonderingly. What could be so secret about a bottle of wine?

He frowned thoughtfully and ripped open the paper around the label, instantly revealing a black and white pencil sketch of a magnolia tree, the logo of a winery in North Carolina. 

“Muscadine wine,” Bixby said, flatly. “We’re in France, and you order a bottle of Muscadine wine?”

Endeavour laughed the laugh that sounded like air being let out of a balloon. 

“You said it was your first taste of wine,” Endeavour said.

“It was,” Bixby said. 

Homemade by Bethany Anne’s father, who was Episcopalian and therefore had no objections to alcohol, even in a dry county, so long as it was used only for “festive occasions.”

“Thanks, old man,” Bixby said. And then, “Well,” he added, rising to his feet and going over to a table that held a decanter and cut-glass tumblers, “You know what this means. You’ll have to try some of the stuff. It’s a bit of an acquired taste, I warn you.”

“That’s all right.” Endeavour said.

Of course, it would be all right.

When did Endeavour ever turn down a glass of anything?

Bix poured out two tumbler-fulls into glasses meant for Scotch, but it was no matter. Muscadine wine wasn’t the type to stand on ceremony; it was just as happy sparkling bold and dark in a wine glass as it was in an old marmalade jar.

Bixby carried the glasses over and then lowered himself back down in the circle of light cast by the tree, taking care, as he sat, not to spill them, and then handed one of the glasses to Endeavour.

“Merry Christmas." 

“Merry Christmas,” Endeavour replied. 

They clinked their glasses together and drank, and Bix was at once carried away by that odd twist of sweetness, thick and acidic and tasting wildly of honeysuckle and of something undefinable, something like sunshine cast in deep and muddled purple. It was a sweetness that brought back a flood of memories—as only half-forgotten scents and tastes could—of the smell of sweetgum trees, and of the chanting buzz of cicadas high in the branches, of sitting out on the ancient roots of a live oak tree with Bethany Anne, feeling the flutter in his chest of the first stirrings of love, feeling his breath catch somewhere in his throat as she turned her head, her hair gleaming bright copper in the August sun. 

It would have been the summer of 1950. The summer he was fifteen years old. The summer Endeavour’s mother died.

Endeavour would have been miles away then, freshly installed in his father’s household, out walking in a very different sort of countryside, trying to stay out of his stepmother’s way as much as possible.

The idea of Endeavour Morse was not one that would have even flickered across Josiah Taylor’s mind in the days he had sat on the roots of a live oak tree, drinking homemade wine. In his youth, Joss had been all flash without gleam, all spark without the deep blue flame he had come, since then, to rely upon.

And, suddenly, Bixby realized that, the thought that had struck him weeks before, as he and Endeavour had watched that old movie together on the couch, wasn’t so far off after all.

They had started out an ocean away from one another. And if they had found each other in this universe, despite such odds, wouldn’t they in every universe?

Water always finds its own level, they say. So wouldn’t he and Endeavour always know, always discover again and again, in whatever world they found themselves, that, despite their outward differences, it was each who filled in the gaps of the other with a completeness they could not define?

Bix took a thoughtful sip of wine, and, as he did so, he found his attention caught by the mistletoe. And he understood why he should have felt that trace of melancholy when he had seen the Thursdays there.

Perhaps he and Endeavour _were_ a mismatch, perhaps it was just the opposite: perhaps the universe was against them after all.

How ironic that he and Endeavour should have gone out looking for mistletoe, to have bothered to have hung the stuff in their house, when they were not free to kiss beneath it at a party. Even here, in the space they had made for themselves, they couldn’t quite shed them, the old masks.

Something of what he was thinking must have shown on Bixby’s face, because suddenly he became aware that Endeavour was watching him, uncertainly.

Then, he was smiling daftly.

“Marry me!” he said.

Bixby blinked, confused, for a moment by what he said. 

“What?” he asked, blankly.

“Marry me!” Endeavour said again.

Bixby frowned. What was he talking about? He did realize that . . .

“You know we can’t,” Bix said.

“If you could, would you? If there was an alternate reality, where we could?”

Bixby quirked a rueful smile. He wasn’t sure if he wanted Endeavour to make a joke out of it, teasing him about his talk of other worlds, worlds he knew Endeavour did not believe in.

“Well?” Endeavour prompted. He took Bix's pajama lapels in his hands, then, and leaned backwards to lie on the carpet, pulling Bix down with him in what was his signature move. “Would you?”

“We can’t,” Bixby said, simply, heavily. “Probably for the best, old man. This way we can’t get divorced.” 

Endeavour looked at him and twisted his head, his hair wild across the carpet, catching the lights of the Christmas tree. Then he huffed a laugh. “Of course, we can’t get divorced,” he said. “Even if we could get divorced, we couldn’t get divorced.”

“What?” Bixby asked, laughing. “What riddle is this?”

“It would be a lie,” Endeavour said, simply. He took Bix’s hand in his then, and placed it over his chest. “No,” he said. “It’s far, far too late for that. You can’t unwrite what was inscribed already on the cold aching stone of my heart.”

Bix snorted. That, it seemed, was pretty rough stuff.

“Where on earth is that from?”

“Nowhere. I just said it now,” Endeavour said.

He pulled Bixby down further, then, looking up at him with eyes that reflected a hundred blinking Christmas tree lights, so that Bix was lying half over him, warm against him.

And perhaps it was true: perhaps they weren’t passionate about the same things, perhaps they didn’t have all that much in common, other than that thread of loneliness, that indefinable feeling of otherness that had first bound them together.

They were two outsiders who stepped within a circle of their own—a circle that held nothing, perhaps, to the outside observer—but which, in fact, held everything.

A circle that held all that was true about each of them, of he and of Endeavour, all that was real, all the dearest freshness, all the deep down things that words cannot express.

Bix could feel it, as he lay there, just how perfectly they each completed the other; he could feel it both in his own heart and in the heart that was not his, beating close and steady, flush against the right side of his chest.


End file.
